Van Helsing II - New Patch & DevDiary

Neocore Games has a new DevDiary that talks about  Co-op Progression.

With the recent patch, we made a modification so that the quest progress gets saved for the client side as well in co-op mode. Therefore, you need to have at least the same progress level as your friend in order to be able to connect to him.

Since we had a lot of feedback about the multiplayer progression, we were kind of forced to make this change. However, the game simply can’t guess where you were in a random server, you could’ve played on 5 different servers with totally different progress, which one’s progress should be yours? But to be able to copy the progress, you have to progress to at least the same level as the host is, because you would miss out content – and we do not want that!

I understand that for now it’s quite irritating that you can’t continue the story, but it is for the greater good! Or at least for your good. You will like this change when you don’t have to replay the game to be able to play neverending story, or scenario together.

However, we will implement a console command soon that will allow players to copy progression to one save from another, which will help if you do not want to play everything over again with your friend. Until then, my advice is to switch roles, the player with the lower progress should host the game, and you will be able faceroll until your current progress with your high level characters, then you can continue with the original world, or the newly created one.

They also released a new patch on Steam.

Major changes include:

Fixed bugs:

- You can now store gold in your stash.
- Character validation now correctly calculates the ability points from the glory level.
- The game no longer saves the spells affecting the hero, and the cooldowns between map changes.
- Fixed the overly aggressive Doomsday Automatons( if you died during the fight, they went away, and attacked the resistance soldiers )
- Quests in "Hidden" state no longer visible in the journal.
- FixQuest 2 for the stoneheads on the giantwoods.
- Enchanting is no longer available for inappropriate item types. This also means that now you can only change the appearance of items to those of the same subtype.
- Healing done by Katarina no longer counts towards the St.Helsing achievement.
- Fixed a crash with the Tempest and Fulgurous Discharge skill.
- You can now reroll enchantments on level 61 items.
- Entropy Discipline no longer reduces crowd control resistance for boss monsters.
- Monsters no longer reflect damage done by damage over time skills.
- Items' level requirement is now capped to 60.
- Fixed some bugs with the Displacement Aura
- Canister Shell now properly damages sigils, and other objects.
- Items no longer sorted by rarity at the Gambler
- Soul Rend can no longer be casted when a time stopping ability is active.

Scenario:

- Fixed the endless boss spawn bug.
- Fixed some of the special conditions.
- Fixed a bug what caused the victory level bonuses not apply correctly.
- Bonuses from Victory Level and Special Conditions are now in the properly considered as a positive effect.
- Elite groups no longer spawn outside the map in Purge and Clue Hunt scenario mode.
- A bunch of smaller bugs
- Plagued scenario special condition no longer affects the healing done by potions.

Balance:

- Increased the mana cost of the Explosive Scattershot.
- Increased the damage of the Glacier Blast.
- Epic and set items are now significantly stronger.
- Scenario monster levels were adjusted.
- From now on, luck gives only 1 gold find chance per point.

Multiplayer:

- Client can now cast world skills properly.
- Fixed a crash during the map change.
- Fixed a bug which made the game stuck at the "connected" state, if you've been disconnected once during the loading screen.

New Features:
- New DLC: Ink hunt!
- The progress is now saved in multiplayer sessions.
- Godlike items are now available!
- Over 150 new end game items!